Yo.
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How romantically gray. Reminds me of where I’ve lived always.
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Honda did very successfully invest in diesel marketing technology.
What are they going for? A WWE Heel?
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Going for? Awards. It worked.
It was the most-awarded campaign of 2005, sweeping awards ceremonies within the television and advertising industries, including the year’s Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, from which it took home the Film Grand Prix—considered the most prestigious honour in the advertising industry.
(…)
Adweek magazine picked the ad as the overall commercial of the decade in 2009.
Also, a truckload of money.
The campaign proved popular with the British public, and Honda reported that its brand awareness figures more than doubled in the period following the campaign’s debut. Overall sales of Honda products within the UK increased by more than 35%, and sales of diesel-engine Accords shot from 518 units in 2003 to 21,766 units in 2004.
I started my career as a Diesel R&D engineer, moving on when industrial computing turned out more interesting. I know the Hyundais, like almost all non-marine small Diesels, have limited life between total overhauls - 2000h versus 6000+ for a typical marine prime mover - I was just curious to know if anyone had actual experience.
Even running monthly is no guarantee, though. I was once in a power cut when the aux generator cut in quite quickly - then there were clouds of white smoke visible out of the window and soon after a very loud bang and the power went off. The engine had been serviced and the service company had forgotten to replace the oil, and the soon-to-be-ex facilities manager hadn’t checked. A 2000KVA Caterpillar engine isn’t cheap to replace.
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Yabut the surf! THE SURF! Glassy, low wind days, and if the swell is pushing up from the south, you’ll get warm-ish Pacific surf, which is the best of all possible worlds.
Also, yeah, it can be a little grey. But grey doesn’t bother me much if I’ve got ocean nearby to enjoy. And Baja offers so much quietude, it’s really quite an epic camping spot. It has plenty of sunny days, too, but that wasn’t one of 'em.
One more thing, @jlw. Prior to departing on my last surf trip in Baja, I hit the local CVS and filled a few cheap backpacks with school supplies (paper, pens/pencils/coloring pencils/crayons, etc.). The few times we passed a rural school, I’d drop these bags off to the kids or the teacher/administrator. Sometimes I offered a little explanation, but the intent was usually picked up without it. If anything, art supplies go a long way for rural families.
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In the winter the swells come from the north west, south swells don’t really start until June or so. And the ocean temp is from the currents, which are unrelated to swells, and they’re frickin weird. You can get away with no wetsuit in San Diego (in summer at least) and then go 60 miles south into Baja and suddenly the water is 52 degrees fareignheight! Takes awhile for it to warm up again, but by the time you reach southern Baja its pretty warm, but personally I still wear a wetsuit even down there. Especially at surf hours, early in the morning.
Great idea on the art supplies, and much nicer than the other usual thing to pass out at military checkpoints, which is porn magazines and beer. I wonder if porn magazines are antiquated down there too now though, in the era of smartphones. Also, if you have any old wetsuits, the fishermen love them.
Funny detail: we were passing through a military checkpoint and one of them pointed at our cooler in a way that we thought was accusingly and said “Cervesa?” We said “nooo”, since we’re conditioned to hide stuff like that in America. This went back and forth a few times until we realized he just wanted a frickin beer on a hot day. Si, cervesa!
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Coals to New Castle, then! My apologies.
I have always found the difference between what Dr. Diesel wanted to enable and the role his engine has actually played to be kind of tragic.
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A family member went to Kyzl in the 1990s with tens of thousands of US dollars in a money belt type contraption. The Russian customs official carefully counted out all the money, and set all but $10 in a pile. Then he pointed at the pile and said “Your money” and at the $10 and said “Geeft?” To which my relative nodded vigorously and said “Da, gift, gift!”. He was glad there were a few small bills in there!
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Ha that’s a good one.
I’ve got way too many Baja bribery stories, but at least there you usually only have to bribe if you’ve done something stupid. One good one was crossing the Baja North/South border at night, without my passport. The guard said “You don’t have a passport? Come with me.” We went into the office and he said “You can come back in the morning and pay the fine and maybe they’ll let you through, or give me 200 pesos (about $20) and I’ll take care of it for you.” Here you go!
As someone selling gas from the back of his pickup truck at the turnout to Bajia de Los Angeles put it, “I like America, but its too complicated. Down here there’s nothing $20 won’t fix.”
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I don’t personally need any of this information but this is a great post. All the hearts.
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Thank you! I keep meaning to print up an easy “how to” for modern solar, so when I’m near an RV with their generator blasting all day even in the sun, and with the exhaust pipe aimed towards me (why is that considered ok???), I can put it under their wiper.
Solar has gotten so awesomely easy and cheap lately, there’s really no excuse to run a generator unless you need air conditioning. And we on the Pacific ocean in Northern California never need AC…
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If you did such a thing I would send it to my parents who have an RV and have been known to run a generator.
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I cannot speak to this product specifically, but the capacity will be more than enough. I also have a Vanagon Westy, with a 50 quart ARB fridge, 66Ah of house battery, and the 80W panel from GoWesty. My first test of the ARB was this fall, at Wasteland Weekend, and the panel provided enough power over the four days that my battery was at well over 13V when I left.
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Have you considered a portable wind turbine? They are quite popular with the sailboat crowd. The downside is that you’ll need a mast (which can bolt to the back of the van) and it takes more room to store than a solar panel. The upside is that it can generate more power for your money and can do so at night while you sleep.
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I’d always wanted to get some wind turbine experience so a couple of years ago I picked one up. Aside from being tough to mount they sure are noisy! At least mine was. A constant whirr from the blades spinning, and the brake engaging and disengaging as it starts putting a load on.
And I didn’t mount it high enough (high enough to get away from gusts is surprisingly high on land) so the thing died after about a year. And by “died” I mean the brake broke so it was spinning uncontrollably in a storm, making a ton of noise for my poor neighbors and threatening to hurl itself off its mount. So I had to climb up to it in the middle of the storm in the middle of the night and lasso the thing! Oh well, the pole became a handy mounting spot for wifi gizmos.
On boats I think it’s a bit simpler since you’re usually away from land obstructions that make most gusts. But even then don’t you need to manually turn off the brake when you want to engage it and generate power? That’s what I had to do, I couldn’t just leave it producing power all day even when I wasn’t there.
Not saying my experience was anything other than rookie errors, but wind turbines are much more involved than solar to get good results, in my experience at least, and it sure is easy to make rookie errors with them!
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Well that was sort of the point. You can’t. Part of the whole “diesel isn’t preferred over gas or propane/natgas” thing. If the dominant name in generators is Honda, and they no make diesel, how wise is diesel?
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Tell me that as you were climbing up the pole you were humming “Ride of the Valkyries.” Even if you weren’t humming “Ride of the Valkyries,” say you were humming “Ride of the Valkyries.”
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Good heavens, none required. It was a most vaguely worded post.
I think the jury is out on this one. What I would say is that the problems we have are largely of our own making in failing to come up with better prime movers used in a more responsible way. Per cargo kilogram kilometre, the worst ship or train is far better than the most fully loaded F-150, let alone an S-series Merc.
When Diesel ships appeared, their oil consumption was around a quarter that of an equivalent steam ship. Since then it’s improved by about 25%. The effect of the Diesel engine on international trade has been phenomenal; without it I am sure globalisation would have happened much slower, but against that the carbon dioxide emissions could still have been even worse. And if R&D had been invested in the gasoline engine instead of regarding it as “good enough” back in the 1980s, the Diesel car would never have amounted to much.
I guess they don’t sell them where you are (US?). There are plenty of Honda Diesel gensets for sale in the UK.
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